


Reverent bruise | split itch

by letmetellyousomething



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Shiro (Voltron), Post-Episode: s06e05 The Black Paladins, Sadstuck, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26094535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyousomething/pseuds/letmetellyousomething
Summary: Keith sat on a log by the fire, with Krolia rubbing ointment onto her son's naked back. His black undersuit was unfastened from his waist up, with the white amour plates stacked neatly to one side. Shiro counted the seconds, willed himself to get hold of the situation, trying to fill in the gap of time where his dissociative blackout had left him.Yet he couldn't help himself. His eyes were inadvertedly pulled back to Keith's shape. Against the backdrop of the campfire and with Krolia in the way, he wasn't able to see the extent of Keith's injuries.~~~A month has passed since their fight to the death. Shiro feels himself splintering apart from Keith.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Reverent bruise | split itch

It happened on one of the first planet touchdowns. They were on their plodding journey back to earth. It could take a year, a year or more - Shiro wasn't so sure what had been Katie's estimation. Everyone was using Altean time measurements now, and his head was swimming these days.

The high-rising flickering light of the fire on this planet was one of the reasons why Shiro wasn't sure what it was he saw at first. Keith had leaned forward to fiddle with the substrate underneath the blaze of the fire place. He tended to the fire in the same manner Shiro remembered from long, cold desert nights on planet Earth.

Just above the collar of Keith's neck sat a discoloration. Shiro stared harder, sweating in cold bullets. 

Something about the movement of Keith tending to the fire had started out comforting, but now it bordered on irritating. They were not on earth. The flame was nourished by a different atmosphere. The alien vegetation they had collected for the fire sizzled and groaned, and yet Keith doggedly tended to its fire as if it weren't a different animal under different stars entirely. As if they were still the same.

  
"You got something there," Shiro said finally.

  
"Huh?" Keith drew back and faced him. His eyes were dark, darker still in contrast with his pale face. If only he wouldn't look so closely at Shiro.

  
Shiro knew he had been impossible these last few weeks.

Casual when Hunk was sincere. Silent when Coran prattled on. Abrasive when Lance tried to show optimisms. Bleak when Katie sought solutions. Even Keith, who had managed to not humiliate him in the usual ways people did when dealing with his infirmity, made him act out. Truth to be told, he didn't like himself very much these days. Yet nobody said anything about the way he acted. Shiro suspected nobody dared to, because everyone needed him to be fine. This was how the paladins dealed with what had happened to them - to move on as quickly as possible, and catch some yelmores while they were at it.

Yes, Keith was the only one who didn't look away, even if he didn't know what to do.

Sometimes Shiro caught himself trying to draw back in his mind, expecting... expecting to vanish in a shroud of his own mind. An aborted motion of an astral body that was paralyzed and bound to the body of his clone now. It didn't help that all his interactions with the real world seemed to run on delay.

These were private thought that he didn't share with any of the others. The troubles he had adjusting to his bodily existence just made him sound like a reason to worry.

To himself he could admit this much:  
  
The comforts of this plane all pulled back in a thorn. They turnt from what he was desperately craving to overstimulation. Keith's seriousness, his earnestness, his love. They all reminded him too much of his grandparents. Their fond eyes on him, their calm readiness to whisk him away to a smothering safety, while they looked on, looking for any sign of weakness.

Memories these days felt almost as real as the reality he was living. Between his place in Green's cockpit next to Pidge and the bedding in her cargo hold where he put his hammering head to rest, it had a lot more variety in any case. They were easier as well, than the memories he had of the clone.

In all of this Shiro was back to being selfish in ways he had hoped to have finally outgrown as teenager. He felt tender all over, bumping into old hurts everywhere.

"It could be a smudge, maybe?" Shiro tried a smile.  
  


Keith hand automatically pressed his knuckles to his bandaged cheek before rubbing the side of his mouth. "Here?"

The white hard shell bandage hid most if not all of the burned tear Shiro had burnt into him. The healing wound had to itch like mad underneath. Not that Keith had voiced any of that. He was too stoic for that, only asking reasonable questions, like when he'd be able to take off the bandage.

He never scratched the wound outright. He only ever applied pressure to it evenly, testing the pain, before drawing his hand back. He had accepted it. And it wasn't like Shiro could ask the simple, vain, selfish question whether or not it would leave a scar.

"On your neck," Shiro said weakly.  
  


Keith craned his neck uselessly. "I guess it's prickling there."

He peeled back the collar slightly. The revealed mottled skin lower left no doubt that it was part of a bigger, yellow bruise. The suit had absorbed most of the shocks during their fights, but he had been thrown around like a ragdoll after all.

"Will you look at that! Keith, did you get necked?" Lance perked up.

Shiro closed his eyes against the warmth of the fire. This was getting the better of him. He was sweating uncomfortably again, and his eyes felt like smears.

"Lance," he admonished him belatedly when he opened his eyes again. He was met with blank, slightly worried expressions from Hunk and Krolia. Keith was looking at him over his shoulder. Hunk sat where Lance had been sitting before. Time had passed without him noticing again.  
  


"Do you want me to get Lance for you?" Hunk asked helpfully and stood up, clearly wanting to get away.  
  


"It's okay," Shiro mumbled and smiled, not even bothering with an explanation. The corners of his mouth felt like the cold dough his grandmother had formed into dumplings.

For a moment Keith sought to make eye contact. Shiro averted his gaze, again. Keith must have thought nothing of it, because he blinked and turned back to face the fire.

He still sat on the same place by the fire, with Krolia rubbing ointment onto his back. He was naked from the waist up, with the black undersuit unfastened. The white amour plates were stacked neatly to one side. Shiro counted the seconds, willed himself get hold of the situation, trying to fill in the gap of time where his dissociative blackout had left him. He had remarked on Keith's bruise, and Krolia had followed up on it. There was somebody else who was looking out for Keith now, after all. If words had passed between them in the meantime, then Shiro hadn't heard them.

Shiro diligently counted the seconds. 100 seconds would do, to evade his friend's and ally' worry. To soothe himself. They were were not in immediate danger, despite of his lack viligance. 

He could tell himself that much, but he couldn't help himself. His eyes were inadvertedly pulled back to Keith's shape. Against the backdrop of the campfire and with Krolia in the way, he wasn't able to see the extent of the bruising, but- no, it was not as bad as he had imagined. It had almost been a month since their fight to the death.

His Galra half made Keith a fast healer. Black and red had faded to yellow, leaving only specks of gray and blue where brunt force had hit most brutally.

Shiro was left to imagine the unknown planes of Keith's body in the flicking light. Keith was very beautiful like this, of course. He could see what the clone saw in him, superimposed on the teenager he had mentored so many years ago. His wider shoulders and more developed muscles made him shapely. He had grown into his own strength, like Shiro knew he would. 

The clone had pushed Keith away, just to see him step out of an Altean ship a few weeks later. He had been so relieved to see him return. Shiro knew the details of this memory with all the intimate indulgences of a lover. Yet it was this Shiro who relived it. The clone hadn't had the time to ponder over it after all, because mere minutes later, he had revealed his real nature and betrayed Voltron.

Yet just for a moment the clone had needed Keith badly - had wanted him to know and forgive him, when the clone couldn't make sense of himself anymore.

Shiro massaged his stump with his left hand without thinking. He had gotten used to his arm ending in his upper arm, with the Galran arm extending it into a blazing weapon. Now it ended abruptly at his shoulder. He felt numb, but for a ball of white hot fury that pooled in his stomach. He could hold onto it like a moment of clarity.

Wasn't that the worst part of it? That the clone had been proven right, to an extent? Keith had forgiven him, even if he didn't know him apart from the real Shiro.

Shiro, on the other hand, knew the clone. And he did not forgive him.

"...alright?" Keith's voice reached him as if he was sitting at the bottom of a lake.  
  


Shiro blinked, violently brought back to reality.  
  
Keith was squatting in front of him, just out of reach. His undersuite was still unfastened. His tone of voice told Shiro that he was trying to check in with him.  
  


"Yes," he said, averting his eyes again. "No problem. It's alright." Even if he had wanted to say more, the sight of Keith's bruised chest had made him silent. 

If Shiro had had no hand in them, he might even had been able to admire the bruises. They spoke of the power Keith had been able to meet head-on, the damage he had minimized through the well-trained functionality of his body. But all Shiro felt in his own skin was the ache of sorrow, and the forgiveness he did not deserve.

Shiro kept his eyes to the ground until he felt Keith stand up and retreat.

The way his clone had left him, had left them... he couldn't say if Keith was more of a bruise or more of an itch to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Kuron deserved better (TM) but this is Shiro's canon compliant POV.


End file.
